Project 1 - Temperature metric converter

Author

Affiliation

Andrew Moles

Learning Developer, Digital Skills Lab

Published

September 10, 2025

Learning objectives:

Create variables
Use calculations on variables
Print out helpful message about conversion

Outcomes

We will write a program that can convert temperature data. Your code will automate the process of taking data and making it into a presentable format.

Make a Celsius to Fahrenheit temperature converter

We will write a programme that converts Celsius to Fahrenheit, and Fahrenheit to Celsius. It will then write out a helpful message.

We have two temperatures from a given time in London and New York. The London temperature is in Celsius, and the New York temperature is in Fahrenheit. In the outputs the numbers are rounded to zero decimal places. We are aiming for the following outputs:

The temperature in London is 25°C, which is 77°F

The temperature in New York is 80°F, which is 27°C

Steps to help you get to the outcome

Part 1 - The setup

Open an R script file and save it.

Part 2 - starting with calculations

When working through a problem it is often sensible to break it down and start with something simple.

Use R to calculate:

25 Celsius as Fahrenheit
80 Fahrenheit as Celsius

Part 3 - using variables

Using the calculations you made, create variables to store the temperature values and the calculated output values.

Part 4 - making a text output

Now we can bring it all together to make our final output.

Use R to make the two text outputs by concatenating elements from one or more variables into a single string.

This should be automated, so if we change the variable for Celsius or Fahrenheit the code will show the new output.

Part 5 - tidy up

Round the outputs to make sure we are looking at whole numbers only.

Part 6 - try different temperatures

Test out your code with different temperatures.

Change your temperature variables to the following:

10 Celsius as Fahrenheit
20 Fahrenheit as Celsius